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But what exactly are they, and most importantly are they a product that a retailer or customer could have faith in.....ie. if it's just a coating does it scratch off easily?
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Personally, I am a bit dubious about Black Titanium. There are apparently two methods of creating the effect, the first one is by applying a hard coating by Physical Vapour Deposition (PVD), whereby the components to be coated are suspended on wires in a vaccuum chamber and with the application of a plasma charge to various other constituents in the chamber which vapourise and are deposited on to the rings, (the other constituents depend on the coating required).
We experimented with this about 6 or 7 years ago before finding out about Black Zirconium and I still remember the embarrassment of showing the first customer our hot, new super durable black coated rings that nothing would scratch as he said to me "can I try and scratch it?" and proceeded to scratch the living daylights out of it quite easily - I left his shop with my tail between my legs
The problem isn't due to the coating not being hard but because it is so thin and deposited onto a relatively soft material it will never stand up to serious abuse. The coating is used on our cutting tools to prolong the life of the tungsten carbide inserts. When applied to a hard surface, the wear resistance of the tool is increased dramatically.
The same scenario applies to a certain extent with Black Zirconium, but, in this case it is not a coating but a transformation of the oxide surface into a ceramic like material called Zirconia which is much thicker.
I did recently refurbish a Black Zirconium ring that was 3 years old and only got damaged when the owner decided to fall over and scrape it along the pavement so it was quite pleasing for me to see that the ring had maintained its original finish over that period of time.
The second method I have no experience of - it is supposed to be a different Titanium alloy that has taken 15 years to develop and the black colour is supposed to be very deep if not all the way through. I have visually examined a ring up close that I was told was made from this alloy and I was a little surprised to see a 'tell tale' pale mark where it looked like the ring had been suspended on a wire.
I would like to take one of these rings apart to be able to recommend them or not, so if anybody has one and would like to send it to me for experimentation I would appreciate it.
I was shown some black coated Titanium rings at the Spring Fair on Sunday by a Far East manufacturer who assured me that it was very durable and would last a lifetime. There was too much of a language barrier for me to get him to understand that I thought he was talking dribble.
Cost wise - as with most things - if you only want one ring coated it will cost a fortune to do, if you have hundreds to do all in one batch it costs pennies.
I once asked in Miami in a branch of a large jewellery retail group if they had any black titanium rings in stock and what they thought of them. The manager told me they did stock them but they kept them in a draw out of sight of the public because they had endless problems with customers bringing them back all sratched and demanding their money back - I think that may answer your question.
Black Titanium?
Black Titanium
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